The octagonal core at the centre of the fort is older than everything around it: it is what survives of a tower from the middle of the fifteenth century, recorded by Gianmario Filelfo and documented in a drawing of 1571. On its ruins, between 1642 and 1643, the Milanese chamber engineer Francesco Prestino put up the fortress you see today, fifty metres above Finalborgo. Much younger than nearby Castel Gavone, it served as its forward defence and as the eye kept on the capital of the Marquisate of Finale.
What to see
The fort reads in layers. The fifteenth-century tower sits at the centre, the seventeenth-century bastioned curtain runs around it, and between 1674 and 1678 the Spanish, led by the engineer Gaspare Beretta, strengthened the works and built the direct link with the town below, so that garrison and inhabitants were never cut off from one another. That campaign gave the complex its present outline.
Then came the abandonments. Left in 1707, ceded by Austria to Genoa in 1713 and partly demolished, the fort was turned into a prison in 1822, a use that lasted long enough to mark the interiors. It passed to the state property office in 1960, and only recent restoration work has put the whole of it back on its feet.
Visiting
You climb up from Finalborgo: the walk is short and steep, closed shoes and half an hour are enough. Since December 2014 the fort has been run by the Ministry of Culture, first through the Polo Museale della Liguria and since December 2019 through the Direzione Regionale Musei Liguria; opening is not continuous and follows the museum calendar and the events in the town, so check before setting off. From the top you command the whole valley floor, which is precisely why the fort stands where it does.
Our editors' tip
Go late in the afternoon, when the light rakes across the bastions and Finalborgo below is already in shadow. Keep half an hour more for nearby Castel Gavone: the two explain each other, the older castle and the fortress built afterwards to defend it and to watch over it.